Several
years ago I discovered a book in the delete bin at an airport bookstore. It was
written in 1978 by French novelist and mathematician Jerome Deshusses. Its
title, "The Eighth Night of Creation", appealed to my awakening
ecological self, and I hoped that I might find its contents of interest.

I
was not disappointed. Its first chapter, "Gehenna", changed both my
understanding of traditional religious teachings and my worldview. In light of
our ongoing struggles to find an appropriate way to dispose of our garbage, and
with Easter only a few weeks away, it seemed appropriate to share Deshusses'
observations.

A
lot of the world's religions promise eternal reward or punishment for how we
handle things here on Earth. In the Christian faith, heaven is where the best
of us will spend eternity. Hell, we're told, will provide endless torment for
those who don't fare quite so well. But whatever the destination, we've been
led to believe that our ultimate fate lies somewhere in the future, beyond
death.

According
to Deshusses, it turns out that when Christ of the Gospels talked about Hell,
one of the terms He used was Gehenna. Over the centuries we've made this word a
general term for torment, but it originally had an exact meaning. Gehenna was
the name of the garbage dump that was nestled in a deep valley outside the
walls of Jerusalem.

Needless
to say the dumps of Christ's day were a far cry from the sanitary landfills we
engineer today. Gehenna was an open pit, infested with rats and reeking with
decaying food and human excrement. The bodies of executed criminals and other
undesirables were also dumped there. When the pestilence that fed on the dump
began getting out of hand, the entire thing was set on fire. But even the fires
of Gehenna didn't purify - they sent billows of reeking smoke over the entire
city, spreading disease and death.

Small
wonder that Christ used the word Gehenna when He was trying to convey what
eternal damnation might look like. It was a powerful image that everyone could
relate to. But I think it goes one step further. I think that we can make our
own heaven or hell, right here on Earth.

So
instead of taking that image and that lesson to heart, we've done what we do
best. Ignore our waste and hope it goes away. We've taken the idea of
stewardship and turned it into dominion. Most of us act like it's our God given
right to make as much garbage as we want. Sure, we'll be accountable for our
actions someday, and hopefully, that day will come after were dead. It's the
ultimate cop-out.

Two
thousand years later, the dumps are still filled with the discarded remains of
our civilization. Instead of being filled with rats and unwanted corpses, we
now cast our radioactive and chemically hazardous wastes away with little
regard for the consequences. But like the rotting wastes of ancient Jerusalem,
sooner or later the mess we're making of this planet will catch up to us.

That
day is fast approaching. Sure we've paid lip service to the idea of waste
reduction with our blue box and recycling programs. The problem is that as fast
as we figure out a way to recycle one kind of waste, we are introduced to a new
generation of consumer products. These new products create more waste that also
requires disposal of some kind.

Consider
the success of single-use products. In just a few years, everything from
single-use dusters to single-use toothbrushes have become must-haves for
consumers, while creating a billion dollar industry in the process. These
products are being produced by the same companies that are now required to pay
their share of curbside recycling programs in Ontario. Not surprisingly, these
new products, which are 100 percent disposable, are not subject to any tariffs
because they cannot be recycled. I can't believe that the Ontario government is
either that stupid or that forgiving.

Enough
is enough. We're running out of space, time and patience. Nobody wants a
garbage dump, and yet we continue to produce the stuff at an alarming rate.
Canadians have the dubious honor of being the biggest producers of garbage in
the world. I think we've finally reached the point where we can no longer hide
from our own Gehenna. When asked for whom the garbage dump is built – the
answer is for you and me.